Human evolution and the evidence for our past

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• Why did early humans make cave art?

  What Ice Age cave paintings and engravings reveal about human skill and symbolic behaviour, and why their original meanings remain uncertain.

• How did people move from foraging to farming?

  How cultivation and animal management emerged in different regions, changed daily life and created new possibilities and risks for human communities.

• When did humans begin to speak?

  When did humans begin to speak? Explore the limits of fossils, anatomy and archaeology in reconstructing the origins of speech and language.

• How Neanderthals lived through Ice Age cold

  Neanderthal body proportions fit some expectations for cold adaptation, but climate, clothing and physiology cannot be reconstructed from one feature or a simple stereotype.

• Myth and archaeology: what the evidence at Troy really shows

  Troy is a real archaeological site, but that does not prove every episode in Homer. Learn how stratigraphy, texts and excavation history shape the debate.

• Desert cities: how oases, water and trade sustained urban life

  What Petra and Palmyra reveal about water engineering, caravan routes and the different ways ancient communities made life possible in arid regions.

• Underwater archaeology: reading cities and ships beneath the water

  How survey, geology and careful excavation reveal submerged harbours, settlements and shipwrecks without turning every discovery into a lost-city legend.

• How did Homo sapiens spread across the world?

  The fossil and genetic evidence traces a complex human history: an African origin, several dispersals into Eurasia, encounters with other humans and later journeys across the world.

• When did human family groups begin?

  There is no single fossil date for the first human family. Ancient DNA from Chagyrskaya Cave identifies close Neanderthal relatives and shows what evidence can establish.

• Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry in living humans

  Ancient genomes reveal interbreeding between Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans. The inherited DNA varies among populations and does not dictate a person's traits.

• Hunter-gatherers in prehistory

  How prehistoric hunter-gatherers combined game, plants, fish, fire, mobility and food sharing, and what archaeology can really reveal about their lives.

• Ice Age climate and human evolution

  What climate archives reveal about human evolution, why African conditions varied by region, and where climate explanations remain uncertain.

• How did the human brain evolve?

  How fossils, endocasts and archaeological evidence illuminate changes in hominin brains, and why brain size alone cannot measure intelligence or explain human evolution.

• When did humans begin to control fire?

  Burned bone and plant ash are not enough to prove controlled fire. See how archaeologists distinguish natural burning from repeated hominin use.

• Nakalipithecus: a jaw from Kenya and the great-ape family tree

  Nakalipithecus from Kenya: its jaw and teeth, age, diet, relationship to other great apes and the limits of calling it a human ancestor.

• Graecopithecus: a disputed hominin known from two fossils

  Graecopithecus explained through a Greek jaw, Bulgarian premolar, tooth roots, dating and the disputed claim that it was an early hominin.

• Sahelanthropus

  Sahelanthropus tchadensis is known from a distorted cranium in Chad and separate limb bones. Its age, teeth and possible bipedalism make it important, but its place among early hominins remains contested.

• The aquatic ape hypothesis: what does the evidence show?

  What is the aquatic ape hypothesis? Examine its history, proposed clues and why human anatomy does not establish an aquatic phase of evolution.

• Homo floresiensis: the small-bodied human of Flores

  Homo floresiensis is known from small-bodied human fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores. Revised dates place its bones around 100,000–60,000 years ago, while its origin and relationship to other Homo remain unresolved.

• Kabwe 1: a Middle Pleistocene human from Zambia

  Kabwe 1 is a nearly complete cranium from Zambia, dated to about 299,000 years ago. Its anatomy is clear; its species name, associated remains and place in human evolution remain debated.

• Homo heidelbergensis

  The Mauer mandible, European fossils and the contested meaning of Homo heidelbergensis in human evolution.

• Homo antecessor: Gran Dolina and an early European population

  Homo antecessor is known chiefly from human fossils in the TD6 level of Gran Dolina, Spain. Its age, facial anatomy and ancient proteins inform human evolution, but do not establish a direct ancestor.

• Homo ergaster

  What African Homo ergaster fossils show about body form, tools, age and the debated boundary with Homo erectus.

• Homo georgicus

  The Dmanisi skulls and jaws record early humans in Georgia, but whether they represent Homo georgicus or early Homo erectus remains debated.

• Homo rudolfensis: the face of KNM-ER 1470

  Homo rudolfensis is an early human species commonly centred on the broad face and large teeth of KNM-ER 1470. Its fossil sample is sparse, its skull and jaws are not associated, and its place beside Homo habilis remains debated.

• Ardipithecus: Ardi and early hominin bipedalism

  Ardipithecus explained through Ardi, A. kadabba, the pelvis, grasping foot, habitat debate and its uncertain place among early hominins.

• Homo habilis: fossils, tools and a disputed early human

  Homo habilis explained through OH 7, skull and hand fossils, brain estimates, Oldowan tools, body proportions and taxonomic debate.

• Homo erectus

  Homo erectus from Java to Africa, Georgia and China: discovery, skull and body anatomy, tools, fire, growth and the contested boundary with Homo ergaster.

• Neanderthals: anatomy, culture, genomes and disappearance

  What Neanderthal fossils, archaeological traces and ancient DNA reveal about Homo neanderthalensis, its Eurasian history and its relationship with Homo sapiens.

• How did life on Earth change through deep time?

  A concise timeline of life on Earth, from early microbial traces and oxygenation to animals, life on land, mass extinctions and humans.

• Why did the human population grow so large?

  How cumulative culture, food production, sanitation and medicine shaped human population growth, and why a larger population is not the same as universal well-being.

• How early hominins made stone tools

  Compare the Lomekwian, Oldowan and Acheulean stone-tool traditions, their dates, techniques and what they can tell us about early hominins.

• The first hominins and the evidence for our earliest ancestors

  How fossils of Sahelanthropus, Orrorin and Ardipithecus are used to investigate early hominins, bipedalism and the branching history before Australopithecus.

• Human origins: how Homo sapiens emerged in Africa

  What African fossils, archaeology and genetics reveal about the emergence of Homo sapiens, and why the evidence supports a complex population history rather than one precise birthplace.

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